Opening Possibilities and Empowering Futures Through Digital Literacy A Digital Educator's Journey

Transformative Job Market

• New Career Types/Tracks: 85% of all jobs available by 2030 will be positions/careers non-existent prior to 2020 (Institute for the Future 2017; World Economic Forum 2018)
• Landing the Position: "Soft Skills" remain top priority in hiring practices, but these are increasingly digitally inflected: digital communication, digital collaboration, digital creativity, digital problem-solving (see Petrone 2019; Marr 2022)

Responsibility in Higher Education

• Inclusivity: The digital divide is most pronounced across issues of Race, Gender, and Class. When we fail to integrate digital literacy into higher education, we create double-jeapordy digital inequity (McLay & Reyes, 2019): a process by which we unintentionally widen that gap.
• Engagement: Bringing digital literacy/digital creativity practices in the classroom has a positive impact on student engagement, performance, and retention. This is even more pronounced (nearly 2 times more) for BIPOC and first generation students (Civitas, Adobe, and UT San Antonio, 2020).
• Accountability: Over 80% of Students, Faculty, and Administrators agree/strongly agree that teaching digital literacy skills should be part of the curriculum (Chronicle of Higher Ed)

A Place to Start: A Couple Reorientations

Myth of Expertise (and the Digital Native)

1) Technologies change so rapidly that digital literacy educators, even experts in learning technologies, are always playing catch-up with industry.

2) The so-called "Digital Natives" that Mark Prensky wrote about in the early 2000s are now faculty who regularly struggle to make Zoom work correctly. "Can you see my screen?" ... "You're on mute."

3) The expert-to-student model of teaching works, of course, but there are advantages to embracing student directed learning approaches (self-learning and peer-to-peer models).

• Student Directed Learning helps students form habits of practice for working in creativity technologies and to learn how to learn a new technology.

4) For most instructors, the necessary 'expertise' resides elsewhere: i.e., in disciplinary ways of knowing.

• Instructor-expertise needs not be in technologies, but in helping provide guidance on methods and practices for discovering, developing, and validating knowledge.
• Instructor-expertise helps signal to students the acceptable modes and means of representing knowledge and practice in a given discipline, field, industry, etc.

Pedagogy & Practice

When bringing digital technologies into the classroom, it is important to remember that the technologies are not the focus (i.e., it is not tech for tech's sake). Rather, we must remain people oriented, pedagogy focused, and purpose driven.

• What technologies are available to students?
• What kind of activities/assignments can students do with those technologies?
• Are there clear pedagogical values with this engagement that align with course goals and student learning outcomes?
• What considerations are there for matters of access and accessibility? Hardware/software (material) limitations? Conceptual limitations?
• What kind of instruction will they need (or what kind can I leverage/provide)?
• What is my role with helping students learn the technology? Expert? Coach? Co-Learner? Other?
• Are there existing resources or support that might help orient students to the technology and assignment?

Embracing Failure

You don't have to be an expert and you don't have to be perfect. All you really need to start down this path is a willingness to fail and to share that journey with students. It can actually help in easing student anxiety about working across platforms and media. In my classes, I embrace a couple different approaches that help reorient how we think about failure.

Fun Failure, Fast Failure, Formative Failure

• Fast failure is designed to get the bad (or less than ideal) ideas out of the way and to do so quickly. What matters here is not whether a student comes up with the right idea for a project or solution, or even the best explanation or approach, but rather a quick (low-risk) engagement to (1) get ideas into the conversation and (2) to filter out the ideas likely to bear less fruit so as to better focus energy/time.
• Fun failure focuses on celebrating, quite openingly, each others' innocent and incidental mishaps and miscues (technological, conceptual, or other): e.g., I often invite students to use the last or first 5 minutes of class to share their "fun failures" and I openly share my own (especially those of a technological variety). These stories, artifacts, and shared experiences become part of the course culture (and sometimes evolve into course memes).
• Formative failure is another name for drafting, iterability, or review (peer review as well as pre-grade instructor review). The reality is that most writing or making activities go through multiple 'final' versions before being done, publishable, etc. So rather than focus on failure as a shortcoming, treat this iteration as formative (or even as a series of formative failures) that shape the work / ideas toward a better end.

Course Tokens: A gaming pedagogy approach (one option)

Tokens are a course design feature that can help lower student anxiety about course work and foster a climate committed to taking intellectual risks. They function as a form of currency (given and earned) that can be exchanged for a number of uses.

• In my courses, students start with 3 tokens (one for each major assignment) and have the opportunity to earn 3-5 more based on specific course-related challenges

COURSE TOKEN USES

• 72-hour Extension - Students can use a token for a "no questions asked" guaranteed 72 hour extension (excluding final course projects).
• Revise & Resubmit: Students can use a token to revise and resubmit any course assignment for an improved letter grade.
• Excused Absence: Students can use a token to offset an otherwise unexcused absence.
• 1% Final Grade bump: Students can use a token to receive a 1% grade final grade increase (only one token can be used in this manner)
• Collaborator's Pass: Students can use a token to turn any assignment into a collaborative project (each student involved must spend a token).

Pedagogical Transformation(s)

As instructors create space for more digital literacy and/or active learning in the classroom, some of the core policies and practices of the class may have to evolve as well to accommodate this new orientation.

New Course Models | Digital Literacy + Active Learning (e.g., ENG-W171@IU)

This new course in the IU curriculum was co-created by Justin Hodgson and Miranda Rodak (IU Bloomington). W171 fulfills the First Year Writing Gen Ed requirement at IU, brings together active learning and digital literacy, and features a mentor / apprentice co-instructional model.